News behind the news. This picture is me (white spot) standing on the bridge connecting European and North American tectonic plates. It is located in the Reykjanes area of Iceland. By-the-way, this is a color picture.

Tag Archives: 2012 Presidential campaign

If you follow the mainstream media, you might conclude that foreign interference in an election only matters when Republicans do it.

Meanwhile, BizPacReview reported yesterday that Pras Michel, a rapper for the group ‘The Fugees,’ has been indicted by the U.S. government for funneling millions of dollars of foreign money to Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign.

The article explains the charges:

In a DOJ statement, the feds announced Michel and a Malaysian financier were charged with four counts “for conspiring to make and conceal foreign and conduit campaign contributions.”

Michel, 46, and Low Taek Jho, 37, aka”Jho Low,” were charged with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and for making foreign and conduit campaign contributions. Michel also was charged with one count of a scheme to conceal material facts and two counts of making a false entry in a record in connection with the conspiracy.

The article includes a statement from the Department of Justice:

According to the indictment, between June 2012 and November 2012, Low directed the transfer of approximately $21,600,000 from foreign entities and accounts to Michel for the purpose of funneling significant sums of money into the United States presidential election as purportedly legitimate contributions, all while concealing the true source of the money. To facilitate the excessive contributions and conceal their true source, Michel paid approximately $865,000 of the money received from Low to about 20 straw donors, or conduits, so that the straw donors could make donations in their names to a presidential joint fundraising committee. In addition, Michel personally directed more than $1 million of the money received from Low to an independent expenditure committee also involved in the presidential election in 2012.

The indictment also alleges that by funneling campaign contributions through straw donors, Michel caused a presidential joint fundraising committee to submit false reports to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), including a false amended report in June 2013. The committee’s reports were false because they identified the straw donors, rather than Low or Michel, as the true source of the contributions. In addition, the indictment alleges that by contributing more than $1 million of the money he received from Low to an independent expenditure committee, Michel also caused that committee to submit false reports to the FEC, insofar as those reports identified Michel as the source of the contributions when, in fact, it was Low. The indictment further alleges that in June 2015, Michel submitted a false declaration to the FEC in which he claimed that he had no reason to conceal the true source of his contributions to the independent expenditure committee in 2012, even though Michel knew that the true source of that money was Low and that Michel had funneled the foreign money into the election.

It is good news that the Department of Justice is holding Mr. Michel accountable.

One of the best analyses of this year’s Presidential election can be found on the Brody File at CBN.com. David Brody is the political correspondent for CBN and does a very concise job of breaking down the reasons for President Obama’s victory. The Brody File is a video about 30 minutes long and is well worth watching.

David Brody cites three main reasons for Mitt Romney‘s loss of the election:

1. Mitt Romney was the wrong candidate. He was the candidate put forward by the Republican establishment. As a candidate, Mitt Romney was not what the Republican base wanted–he was part of the GOP establishment–not the party base. Right now there are some serious gaps between the GOP establishment and the base of the party.

2. Mitt Romney was defined early by the Obama campaign–not by the Romney campaign. In April, May and June, the Obama campaign ran personal attack ads directed at Mitt Romney defining him as a rich businessman from Bain Capital who was going to ship everyone’s job overseas. He was accused of everything from causing a man’s wife to die of cancer to animal abuse. The Romney camp did not respond to the charges at the time, and that image of Mitt Romney was established.

3. The American electorate is changing. The GOP never reached out to the Hispanics, other minorities, or the youth vote. In 1996, 10 percent of American voters were non-whites. In 2012, 21 percent of American voters were non-whites. The Republican campaigns did not take into consideration the fact that the demographics of American voters have changed.

For me, the bottom line in this election is the split between the Republican establishment and the Tea Party. I voted for Mitt Romney. He is a good man who would have done a good job. However, I would have preferred a candidate who was more clearly a conservative. I believe a true conservative would have beaten Barack Obama.

I seriously doubt that the Republican establishment has learned from this experience. I suspect that when the new Congress convenes in January, it will have the same Republican leadership. Until we get the establishment out of Washington–both Republican and Democrat establishment–we will continue down the path we are currently on. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Right now that is a pretty good description of the American voter.

Paychecks are shrunken after more than a decade in which the workplace has asked more of wage earners and rewarded them less. The decline has knocked someone at the midpoint of the salary scale back to where he or she would have been in 1996.

Then, the subway fare, still paid by token, was $1.50, gasoline was $1.23 a gallon and the median rent for a stabilized apartment was $600 a month. Today, the base MetroCard subway fare is $2.25, gasoline is in the $3.90 range and the median stabilized rent is $1,050, with all the increases outpacing wage growth.

…Four years ago, the Daily News endorsed Obama, seeing a historic figure whose intelligence, political skills and empathy with common folk positioned him to build on the small practical experience he would bring to the world’s toughest job. We valued Obama’s pledge to govern with bold pragmatism and bipartisanship.

The hopes of those days went unfulfilled.

…First came emergency economic stimulus. Because Obama gave free rein to House and Senate Democrats in deciding how to spend $800 billion, the legislation was heavily designed to satisfy the party’s constituencies and hunger for social programs, and inadequately weighted toward job-multiplier projects like building and repairing bridges and railroads — including subways.

After originally projecting that the program would produce 4 million more jobs than the country now has, along with a 5% jobless rate, Obama pleads that he saved Americans from more dire straits.

Next came Obamacare. While the country bled jobs, the President battled to establish universal health insurance — without first restraining soaring medical bills. Then he pushed one of the largest social programs in U.S. history through a Democratic-controlled Congress without a single Republican vote.

R.I.P. and never to be resurrected — Obama’s promised bipartisanship.

…Romney’s approach is the stronger.

Critically, he has tailored his policies to create jobs, jobs, jobs.

The centerpieces of Romney’s plan call for spending restraint and rewriting the Internal Revenue code to lower rates by 20%. He would make up much of the lost revenue by eliminating deductions and loopholes that have made the tax system a thicket of strangling complexities. On its own, paring the personal and corporate rules to the basics would catalyze business and consumer spending.

The endorsement concludes:

Offering a rosy vision of a country already on the rise, Obama argues that he would lead a resurgence by staying the course. He posits that spending in areas such as education and clean energy would be beneficial, and he sees raising taxes on high-income earners as key to “balanced” deficit reduction. Each on its own is attractive, but the whole comes up short.

The presidential imperative of the times is to energize the economy and get deficits under control to empower the working and middle classes to again enjoy the fruits of an ascendant America.

We are in the last days of the silly season for this election. We will be seeing news stories and pictures designed to change your mind. Some of them will be real, and some of them will be totally false. To illustrate the fact that things are not always what they seem, I am posting a YouTube video below:

Keep this video in mind as you watch the political ads making the closing arguments.

The choice of Paul Ryan has moved the future of Medicare to the front of the debate.

The article states:

The economy remains a central issue, as do Mr. Obama’s overall record and Mr. Romney’s past one. But now the looming fiscal crisis, Medicare, and the size and role of government are front and center of the campaign. The presidential contest has been elevated into a clash of big ideas and fundamental differences. Neither presidential candidate, but especially Mr. Obama, could have imagined this. Credit Mr. Ryan.

This shift has been damaging to the president and helpful to Mr. Romney. The slogan of Mr. Obama’s campaign is “Forward,” but he’s become the status-quo candidate. Mr. Romney, having adopted slightly revised versions of Mr. Ryan’s bold plans for reducing spending and reforming Medicare, is now the candidate of change. This might have happened to some extent without Mr. Ryan in the race, but it certainly wasn’t inevitable.

There have been a lot of personal attacks on Mitt Romney from the Obama camp during this campaign. Mitt Romney has been accused of being responsible for the cancer death of someone’s wife, insinuations have been made that there is something unseemly about his wealth, and he has been accused of all sorts of nefarious things. The addition of Paul Ryan to the ticket will not only spread out the attack–it will change to debate to actual substance.

The more Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan talk about issues, the more foolish the President’s minions look when they engage in personal attacks.

A elderly friend of mine yesterday told me that Mitt Romney hates old people and that if Mitt Romney becomes President, he will end Medicare. She was not aware of the fact that President Obama has cut Medicare about $700 billion to fund Obamacare (nor was she interested in hearing that). Unfortunately, she will vote in November. But I am not sure she is typical. There were two other senior citizens sitting with us who immediately told her the truth. She didn’t listen, but at least she heard it. That means that three of the four of us knew the truth and will vote accordingly. At least that was good news.

I was at The Villages today to hear Paul Ryan. While waiting for over 2 hours before he spoke, I was struck by conversations in the crowd. It was not about “Protecting and Strengthening Medicare.” In fact, (probably about 75% of the crowd were retirees) most of the conversations were centered on “Protecting and Strengthening America.”

People see this nation adrift! From the “You didn’t build that” comment by Obama to the recent silly Biden comments-this adds to the correct perception that the Obama Administration did not and does not have an answer to get us on the right track!

Senior citizens vote, and most have been around long enough to be able to distinguish truth from fiction. That is my hope for the 2012 election.

This is a campaign ad from the Republican party. It is not a joke–the audio you hear is actually real. I have no problem with having fun and being lighthearted, but this is a presidential campaign that will decide the future of America and American small business. The bottom line here is, “How much freedom do you want as an American citizen?”

The Associated Press reported yesterday that during the month of June, President Obama’s campaign spent more than it collected. President Obama has been running the federal budget that way since he took office. Unfortunately he didn’t start with a surplus, so we are deeply in debt as a nation due to his spending.

The article reports:

June was the second consecutive month in which Romney brought in more money than Obama, finance reports filed Friday show. Romney’s money advantage prompted Obama’s campaign advisers to warn earlier this month that the president could lose the election if the financial disparity continued.

There is a little confusion in the above statement about the concept of cause and effect. If President Obama loses the election, it will not be because of the financial disparity–the financial disparity will instead be the result of waning support among the people who voted for the President in 2008.

According to the article, President Obama still has more money in the campaign bank than Governor Romney. The concern is that if the fund raising disparity continues, that money will soon be exhausted.

The Associated Press article leaves out a few facts. Many of President Obama’s donors give less than $200. Their donations do not have to be reported to the Federal Election Commission. Because the software on the President’s campaign website to prevent fraudulent and illegal contributions has been disabled, foreign donations are accepted. This was also the case in the 2008 election.

Urgent Agenda reader Adrian Murray wondered if the Obama campaign has become any more compliant this time around than it was last time. He conducted the necessary experiment and wrote Urgent Agenda proprietor Bill Katz.

Adrian Murray then attempted the following donation to the Obama campaign:

Deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter laid out the issue as the Obama team sees it: “Either Mitt Romney, through his own words and his own signature, was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the SEC, which is a felony.”

The article at Power Line article explains what actually happened at Bain Capital:

The Romney campaign responds that their man gave up control over all investment decisions in 1999 because he would be taking charge of the Winter Olympics. His name remained on SEC filings because he was technically still the owner.

The article at Power Line further reports:

But, the SEC filings apparently don’t show involvement by Romney in Bain-related decisions after the 1999 date.

Sometimes when I read Democrat talking points, I wonder how some people sleep at night.